


One day, when...

by imsfire



Series: Esper 'verse [7]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016)
Genre: Birds, Bodhi Rook (mentioned) - Freeform, Chirrut Imwe (mentioned) - Freeform, Everybody Lives, F/M, Freckles, Hope, OC (Esperanz Andor-Erso aged about 4) (mentioned), Sunburn, bad jokes about in-universe equivalent of scientific Latin, observing the natural environment and finding hope in that
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 15:35:15
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 5,170
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15318633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imsfire/pseuds/imsfire
Summary: Cassian watches wildlife at various stages in the war (and the peace), and thinks of the future...





	1. Blue gulls

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ivaylo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ivaylo/gifts).



The transports were due in an hour, but the logistics of getting in place above this isolated stretch of coast road, unseen, meant that as usual Cassian had already been here since before dawn. 

He’d found his position quickly and settled himself.  He was sitting now comfortably tucked between two rocks on the clifftop, in the shade of a clump of evergreen.  With quadnocs he could see the road back for several klicks, and almost as far the other way.  He had a flask of water, still half full, and an empty one of kaf; a couple of energy bars and some dried fruit left from his rations; and nothing to do.  Nothing but wait and watch and keep from falling asleep in the midday heat. 

He’d swiftly settled in to the strange mental state of keeping watch, so familiar after countless missions; check the road every five minutes or so, sweep the glasses along the horizon inland, back over the sea, up and down the cliffs and the shoreline far below.  Just keep scanning and stay ready, until the convoy came into sight, and Bodhi brought the ship in for the rendezvous. 

If everything went to plan it would all be over in twenty minutes, once that happened.  He hoped.

He wondered sometimes, when he swore-in new recruits and saw their eyes go bright with resolve, their faces light up with hope reborn, at the words of the famous oath, whether any of them knew how boring it could be sometimes, being a soldier.  How many hours were spent stuck on board a small ship slogging through hyperspace.  How much time on base went into drills and system checks, and report-writing; how one had to repeat training programmes until every move came by rote.  How many hours were spent like this, just waiting; in position, ready to be deployed, but with no sign of action.  Not yet…

The sea below his perch was a delicate blue-green, shading to emerald in deeper water.  Waves sparkled in the brilliant sunlight and all along the coast small stretches of white betrayed the presence of rocks and shoals offshore.  Directly beneath Cassian, a tiny strip of beach was washed steadily by breakers.  Only an experienced sailor would bring a boat in here; only an experienced and skilled pilot would bring an airborne craft down on that hand-span of sand and shingle.

The flying would be fine, and the landing, and the take-off.  They always were.  He had absolute faith in Bodhi.  Had seen him fly like a miracle, had seen him handle this particular landing more than once, flawlessly.

There was no reason it shouldn’t all go smoothly.  Smooth as blue butter, as Melshi was fond of saying.  Cassian was the salt in the butter; the guarantee of perfect flavour.  There to spy on proceedings, spot anything going awry or anyone where they shouldn’t be, and if need be, assist the team by sniping from above. 

Then hike round to the promontory three bays away and wait to be extracted, after another hour, by K-2 in a borrowed U-wing. 

No reason at all to suppose anything would go amiss.  He hoped, he hoped.  It was just another day.

Cassian had known plenty of missions go wrong, but also plenty, probably a majority, that went off well; more-or-less as planned, pretty smoothly, even sometimes perfectly.  No reason this should be one of the problem ones.  It was a familiar route, their regular pick-up-disguised-as-theft; everyone in the team had been here before, most of them in the exact roles they were filling today. 

He picked up the quadnocs once again and scanned carefully along his field of vision.  Empty road, empty sea, empty horizon, empty bay.

Not quite empty, of course.  Empty of traffic; empty of Imps.  But there was life, everywhere.  A dozen different kinds of trees and plants clung to the cliffs and fringed the bay.  Insects buzzed in the summer air and there was a colony of blue gulls nesting on the headland. 

As Cassian watched, one of the adults took wing, diving and wheeling in the acrobatic tumbling barrel rolls of a mating display.

He knew they were native to Gansitar, not here; it was a world with gravity higher than this that had led them to evolve their huge wings and astonishing powers of flight.  Here on Bendreis, in a markedly more normal grav field, it gave them a glorious advantage.  Blue gull display flight in standard gravity was a spectacle he could happily watch for the next forty minutes.  Once the first vehicles were in sight he’d have to focus solely on them.  But for now, between scans…

Soar and glide, dive and pull-up, skim the surface of the sea and then climb, climb, and finally plummet again with wing-tips feathering in perfect control.  Another bird sprang off the clifftop to join the first, and another, until half the colony was swooping and plunging above the water.  Their nest-mates called out to them, harshly musical cries, eager, even admiring, as they watched the showcase flying that proved the other bird’s fitness to breed, and its devotion.

He hoped the arrival of Rogue One wouldn’t perturb them too much.  The last pick-up here had been before the birds’ breeding season began.

One day, maybe, they’d have the sky over this bay to themselves again.  If – when – the war was won. 

One day, when.  He could say it now.  When the war was won.  It might be a long way off still, but they had the chance of victory at last, and there were whole planets free already, that had sweated under Imperial control for years.  If Lothal, why not here?  The locals would hardly use this road if the Empire weren’t here; might not even keep it open.  All the colony’s eight human settlements were coastal, and their tradition was for sea-trade and sea-transport, not land or air.  But the Empire had built them overland roads and airports and designated flight-ways, had announced how they were investing in modern infrastructure; so it was a matter of Imperial pride to keep the road operational.

It was a matter of pride too to the pirates who called themselves Sea People, to raid the road, and the Imperial shipments that used it.  And by agreement, a few raids here and there by the Alliance were easily assigned to their account.

If – when – the war was won; he’d like to come back here one day.  Learn the names of these evergreen trees, these scented grey-green herbs, and the insects that hummed and fluttered and crept past him.  Watch the gulls again.  If he was still alive.  Bring Jyn, whose eyes were the colour of that sunlit sea; who would know the names of the rocks, and be as entranced as him by the wild freedom of the birds.  Bring Bodhi, who would reminisce about landing on that beach; and K, who would analyse flight patterns and offer statistics on the health and age of each gull.  It would be good to do that.  In the future which he now, at last, really believed he might have.

_Let them all be there to see it, the blue gulls dancing in the blue sky.  Let us live, let me live, and see that day._

But even if he were not alive, these living blithe creatures would still be here, soaring in their bright air.  They would go on without him, for generations, until their clifftop fell altogether.  All over the galaxy, whatever happened to him, life would go on. 

And that thought too was strangely hopeful.


	2. Glasswings

“I think I may have caught the sun,” Jyn said.  She reached back to rub her neck, scratching  thoughtlessly at the inflamed skin till it was even more red.  “I should have used that goop of Chirrut’s, krif it.”

She’d been lying peacefully on her stomach, watching the road, for the last couple of hours.  Their main mission had gone off without a hitch and with enough time to spare that they’d been waiting out the time till their extraction with a secondary target neither had expected to meet; checking on the frequency of transports passing in each direction to and from an Imperial supply depot in the middle of the rolling savannahs of Deimaak’s drought-stricken northern continent. 

It wasn’t the most exciting way to fill a morning, but then surveillance seldom was.  At least they had one another’s company; they’d been taking turns, one keeping watch on the transit route while the other looked out for spotter drones or droids, or anyone approaching on foot.  Since the road was pretty quiet and there was no sign of trouble, as the time wore on they’d begun to chat.  About nothing very much; food, and bootlace brand comparisons, and Kay’s frustration with her habit of borrowing Cassian’s clothes; the weather here, and what a contrast it is to Hoth; and so on round via cold drinks and hot drinks and back again to food. 

But between scanning their surroundings and talking idly, and lulled by the peaceful summer breeze that cut across the day’s heat, neither had thought about Jyn’s pale skin. 

Which now was rather less pale.  She rolled over and sat up, and it wasn’t just the back of her neck that was showing the effects of the strong UV levels. 

“Oh, Jyn, your face…”

“What about it?” Her expression wasn’t so much belligerent as simply fearless; as if to say, if he had a problem with her face he could take said problem and boil it for his tea.

Cassian didn’t have a problem with her face.  He’d seldom loved a face so much in all his life.  But the flush of sun across her cheeks had brought out the freckles whose existence was normally so uncertain.  There was no doubting them now. 

He felt a tiny bit drunk from the heat, though he’d been drinking water steadily all day, and his traitorous mouth said “Oh Jyn, you’re so beautiful” and left him hanging while she stared in surprise.

_Oh krif, that wasn’t what I meant to say._

“You’re not making much sense here, Cassian.  Have you got heatstroke?”

“No.” He was pretty sure he hadn’t, anyway.

“Well, I’m hearing some pretty wild statements.  I’m beautiful?  Hello, wake up, please send the regular Cassian Andor back into service?”

“You know I think you’re beautiful.”

“Oh.” Jyn coloured even more.  _Oh, sweet light, so, so beautiful._   She was sitting facing him now, her disordered hair around her shoulders, with the light in her dear and lovely face.  She looked at him quizzically. “Am I really sunburned?” she asked, apparently trying to steer the conversation away from his admiration.

“No – well, a bit – but mostly just your neck.  Where you were rubbing.  The back of your neck.”

“Yeah, damn, that’s what I thought.” Yet as if defiance could cure sunburn, she turned away, pulled up the quadnocs and began scanning the road again.

“Jyn…”

“How much longer do you think before the team get here?”

They both knew the timetable; she was looking for something to talk about.  His own neck went hot with guilt and he sighed.  “Jyn.  Look at me.  Please.  I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“What?” Jyn sat up again, half-smiling in incredulity; and _oh treacherous soul_ , now he was aware of the freckles they were all he could see, that delicate stardust scattered across her nose and cheeks, out to her temples, speckles and glimmers on her delicate skin.  He wanted to stroke and touch that dusting of gold on her.

“You didn’t embarrass me,” she said.  She was smiling.  Cassian felt himself smile back in helpless reaction.  Of course he didn’t embarrass her, she was unashamedly shameless and he was glad of it.

He said cheerfully, teasing “Ah, well, that’s good, then.”

Behind her in the sky a pair of glasswings rose soaring on a thermal.  The warm air was full of the birds’ keening calls, against a background hum of chirring insects in the dry trees and the sigh of the breeze in the long dead grass.  It was a peaceful scene, for all its bleak scorching heat, and almost as beautiful as Jyn herself.  The glasswings looped and climbed higher, and Cassian remembered another road, another day; waiting for a pick-up, on a sea-cliff on Bendreis six standard months ago, and realising how much he had absorbed over the years about the wildlife of planets where he’d been assigned.  He’d been watching blue gulls then.   _Laria azulia_ , he’d looked them up afterwards; giant acrobatic fish-eaters swooping over the coast.  And now it was glasswings, _Pinnacristalinis soto_ , insectivores, native to the Lauga system; and it was all so beautiful, and -

“One day,” he said “They’ll want people to help clear up the mess the war’s made.”

Jyn’s eyebrows bounced again at the non-sequitur. “Yeah…” she said after a moment.

“All the places that have been kriffed-over,” he explained “by mining and refineries and oil-fields, all the places that have been deforested or polluted or had their climates fucked up.  As well as all the refugees who’ll need to go home; think of all the environments that will need to be restored.  Cleaned up, given a chance, so that natural processes can rescue the balance.” 

“Yeah,” Jyn said again.  She tilted her head on one side, looking at him.

He knew that look; knew it from the inside, as well as from watching it on her face so often.  She could tell that he was working his way towards saying something, and she was giving him time.  Letting him feel out the words, as she so often had to do, herself; as he so often had to let her.  

He had never imagined it could be good, to be read by another person this easily.  He’d trained for years to observe the details, the nuances, laminations of expression, micro-inflexions of voice and tone.  To observe in others, and not to show himself.  He could still remember the naked shock of realising for the first time that this fierce need-filled woman was reading him, that her assessment was as quick and precise and unhesitating, and just as accurate, as his. 

But even then knowing Jyn could understand him had never felt like a threat, or a weakness.  And by now, they knew one another’s needs and met them, daily, barely even noticing it.  It had become instinctual, a process as unconsidered as breathing. 

He sat grinning at her in the sunlight.  He was going to try and articulate this thing, that had been dormant inside him since that day on the cliffs.  So that he could share it with Jyn, who would understand. “Well,” he said “it’s just that – it might be something worthwhile to do.  To be involved with.  One day.”

“Restoring things? - forests and – climates and stuff like that?” Jyn glanced round, at the dry hills, baking into dust, and the patches of shade from the scattered trees.

“Yes.  There’s going to be a lot of work to do.  To mend the damage.”

“Yeah, there is.” Her eyes came back to his face and she smiled slowly, the broad careless smile that showed her teeth and creased her face, made the stardust freckles dance. “I love it when you talk about the future.  About what’ll happen when the war’s over.  It’s – it’s good to hear.”

“It’s good to think about.  For a long time I didn’t dare to, but now…”

“Yeah.”

He shook himself out of falling into her eyes. “And now you should cover your neck before you burn even more.”

“Ah, it’ll be enough if I put on some of the gunge, won’t it?”

“Nope.  You’re meant to put it on first, you know that.  Before you got sunburnt.”

“I did.  I put on lots first thing.  I know Chirrut said to reapply the stuff but it’s _sticky_.”

“But if you don’t put enough on you’ll just go on catching the sun.” He rummaged in her pack and pulled out the soft grey-blue scarf she’d kept for all these years, and her canteen.  “You know I’ll still love you even if you turn into one giant freckle.  Now have some water and cover up, and let me take a turn with the road scanning.”

They swapped places, and Jyn draped the fabric over her neck and shoulders and lay back in the shade with her back against the scrubby tree.  She picked up her own quadnocs again and passed his across to him, and Cassian settled in her spot, out in the open.  A long red ground-transporter slid by in the heat-haze, on the distant road, and the thin bright bird-calls floated through the air above them.   Behind him, there was an unmistakable squelch as Jyn squeezed some of the sunscreen cream out of the tube, an application of hope and goop to mend the sun’s work on her skin.

Cassian smiled and counted transports, and listened to the glasswings, and thought of a future.  One day, some day.  Soon.


	3. Morning song

It was a good morning.  One of the best.  Everything pretty much was aching, true, and the burn on his ribs was sore under the roughly-taped bacta patch, and his neck was stiff, and one arm was numb where Jyn had lain on it all night.  But the early light filtered green and soft through the treetops and the air smelled of conifers and fading bonfire-smoke, and the forest moon of Endor was the first place where Cassian had ever thought consciously _Now I know what victory will feel like_.

_Victory, freedom, the end of all our labours.  One day, when the war is finally over; it will have calm light, like this, and sweet air like this.  There will be forest birds singing, and that rough sound from the next level down in this weird tree-house, that might be a wild arboreal creature coming to eat our rations but is probably just somebody snoring._

_Victory will mean mornings of waking up unafraid, of remembering and being glad.  And Jyn Erso sleeping in my arms.  Or at least, on my arm._

He’d had a mug of the local hooch last night, partly in the hope of dulling the pain from his side and partly because, the hells, if he couldn’t let go his self-control the night they destroyed the second Death Star then he wasn’t fit to join in the party anyway.  But he hadn’t liked it much; its flavour was more like some kind of resinous medicinal syrup than any spirits he’d ever encountered before.  Not a drink you’d rush to have second helpings of.

So now, waking in the pine-scented morning, Cassian was clear-headed and fresh. 

Fresh apart from the stiffness, the aches and pains, the burns and bruises. 

They were a small price to pay.  He knew what the morning of the beginning of the world would look like, now.  He knew he’d lived to see it.  This was hope, not just abstract but concrete and warm, and alive.  He didn’t want to miss a moment of this.

Jyn wriggled closer, sliding her hand down from his shoulder and pressing on his heart for a moment before wrapping her arm round him, carefully avoiding the bacta patch, and hugging him close. “You awake?” Her voice was a tiny whisper; if he had still been asleep she wouldn’t have woken him.

But he was awake.  Awake and in her arms, awake with her in his. “Yeah…”

“Feel ok?”

“Yeah…  Kinda.  Okay, sore, but – yeah, I’m good.”

The tree supporting their platform shifted faintly.  The whole world seemed to sway in the breeze, creaking under its breath.  Alive, alive, alive.

Someone coughed on a lower level, and the sound of some of the fierce little locals talking came drifting up from ground level, a merry chattering and a burst of sharp, sneezy laughter.

He put his free arm under his head to raise himself up and look down at Jyn.  He’d pulled his old parka over the two of them last night when they flopped down on the rough bed of pine branches.  Somehow in the night she’d managed to snuggle most of it round herself.  Her eyes smiled up at him from inside the grubby fluff of his collar. 

There was a new cut on her cheekbone, running across almost to her nose; it had scabbed over during the night but the skin around it looked tender and slightly inflamed.  He wondered if it would scar.

Not that Jyn would care.  She’d had injuries all over her at one time or another, and plenty of them had left scars.  Maybe someday soon, they’d have less occasion to pick up the kind of wounds that left scarring behind.

Like an echo of his thoughts, a human voice came faintly up from one of the lower tree platforms, chivvying a friend. “Wake up, sleepy-head, the sun is shining and we won the war!”

“No, we didn’t,” came a dopey rasp. “Not quite.   Not yet.”

“Aww, well, _almost_ won.  Come on, babe, celebrate a bit, can’t you?”

“Celebrated last night,” said the second speaker. “And I’m fucking feeling it now.  Now pipe down and lemme get back to sleep, ok?”

Jyn pushed herself up on her elbows and worked her way up out of the folds of the stolen coat, to plant a silent kiss on Cassian’s lips.  “Sounds like somebody drank too much Ewok homebrew,” she murmured. “Glad I kept off it.”

“You didn’t miss much.  It’s pretty weird stuff.”

Another bird began singing, almost directly overhead, and Jyn’s face broke into a broad smile that deepened the creases round her mouth into dimples. “Grumpy down below is right, I know, it isn’t over yet.  But it feels a bit nearer now.  Know what I mean?  The idea we might actually win.”

“It does, yeah.” Pins and needles tingled in his right arm where her weight had lifted off it; he flexed his fingers to stimulate the circulation.  “Everything seems possible today.”

“I wonder what those birds are called?” The singing went on joyously overhead, and Jyn cocked her head, listening.

“One day,” Cassian said “We’ll find out.”

It sounded like a promise.  Very well, then; it was a promise.  He promised it to himself and to her.  He’d been saying and wishing _One day, one day_ , for so long now, ever since that day they lived when they should have died.  And now _One day_ was approaching fast.  He could almost see its outline through the trees.

One day, here or somewhere else, they would learn what the birds were called, or spin their own names for them.  One day. 

Everything was possible, at last.


	4. What-oos

The afternoon light was beginning to fade when Jyn got back to the house.  She climbed wearily onto the stoop and sank down on the bench next to Cassian.  Without a word he handed her an empty beaker and poured her out some of the iced herbal tea he’d been drinking.

She drank a long draught and threw her head back with a sigh of pleasure. “Fuck, that’s good.”

“Is it still cold enough?  I made it a while ago…”

“Mmm…” She tucked her head against his side, and he lifted his arm and put it round her. “Not really cold, but it’s cool.  ‘s great.” 

She smelled of clean sweat, a sharp healthy smell, with an overlay of homemade citron bug-repellent.  The hot day had flushed her skin and brought out the freckles that scattered across her face in tiny constellations of gold dust.

“Mommy-wrangling go okay?”

Jyn dug him in the ribs very gently. “Mommy-wrangling, indeed.  I was teaching ante-natal exercise classes, you know that.  And they went fine, except this is not the weather for callisthenics.”

“Well, good work anyway, Sgt, I’m sure all your students appreciate it.”

“So long as they keep up the bloody exercises I’ll be happy.  And how was your afternoon, Major?”

“I ran about after a small lively person who didn’t want his shoes on, didn’t want his lunch and then ate most of mine instead.  Then he had a nap and I finished annotating my invertebrate count; and then we had a nature walk and a snack, and Esper had his favelet story read to him twice.”

“The Egg?”

“The Egg, yeah.  And bath-time was a lot of fun.  I’ve dried the floor now.  We had fish and fried tubers and green herb salsa for tea and he’s been fast asleep for the last hour.”

“I’ll look in on him in a minute.”

Cassian topped up her glass. “We kept some fish and salsa for you.  I can make you more fries if you like.”

“Just the fish would be good.  It’s too hot for heavy stuff like tubers.” She drank another long swig of the iced tea and set her tumbler down on the terraced floor. “I’m just going to kiss Esper goodnight and then I’ll get that food.  You’re an angel to save some for me, I’m so tired I could melt.”

The screen door creaked, a sheaf of faint light sweeping out and vanishing again as it swung shut.  Cassian sat waiting in the gathering dusk.  The evenings were getting longer, sunsets later, as Yavin 4’s short heady spring advanced towards summer.  Only a few weeks ago Jyn’s early evening class had started at sunset and ended well after dark.  Now there was still a faint cool daylight lingering even after she got back.

Crickets sang in the trees, and the little amphibians that looked like small wet leggedy stones were starting to call, _plip-plop, plip-plop_.  Somewhere off in the forest a what-oo bird sang out, perpetually surprised, _what-what-what-ooooo_ …

A biting insect whined past his ear and he slapped it away.  Sunset-fly; there were clouds of them every evening now, all along the harbour-side and up the valley, anywhere there was non-stagnant water to be found.  Maybe when Jyn got back she would sit on his lap and he could share the aura of her bug-repellent.

The door creaked quietly open again and Jyn plumped down on the bench and handed him a small, pungent bottle. “Need any of this?”

“You read my mind.”

In her other hand she was carrying a platter from the chiller; the rest of the fish he’d grilled for himself and Esperanz.  Cassian could smell the fresh herbs of the sauce for a few moments, before the stronger but necessary odour of bug-cream overpowered it.  It was worth it, not to be gnawed upon by midges and stung by sunset-flies. 

By the time he’d finished slapping the mixture on his exposed skin, she was setting the empty plate down with a grunt of satisfaction. “You cook a good fish supper, love.”

“Thank you.”

The last daylight was going; they watched one another in the faint overspill of Esper’s nightlight, falling from the screened windows.  A moth swooped across the terrace and began to fumble at the mesh with a quiet, clumsy pattering.

 _Patter, patter.  Plip-plop, plip-plop.  What-what?  What-what? What-what-what-oooo_ …

“Do you remember,” Jyn said “when we could both identify the make and model of a blaster by the sound it made?  And explosives, and ion weapons?”

“I probably still could, to be honest.”

“What about the things you can hear now?”

“Sunset flies.  One of those big grey-back moths.  Wet-leg frogs.  A what-oo - or it might be a pair of them?” He cocked his head on one side, listening for the distant, startled bird calls in the dusk, triangulating when they came again. “Yes, it’s two of them, there’s one quite near and one’s further off, no?”

“Yeah, I can hear.” She wasn’t much more than a voice in the shadows herself now.  The evening was just starting to cool and the trees stirred in a soft seaward breeze.  It was the kind of breeze with rain in its mouth; pretty soon there would be a shower, delicious after the broiling heat of the day.

“I wonder if they’ve given the what-oos a scientific name yet?”

“Hah,” said Jyn. “How about _Whattooia bloodynoisyii,_ subspecies _yavinensis_.”

“Watch out, or I’ll put in a request to the Science Academy to have them named that for real.”

She laughed, bending forward to reach for the jug of cold drink by her feet; he could still just make out the pale shape of her hand moving in the near-dark. 

_What-what-what?  What-ooo, what-ooo…_

He hadn’t heard a blaster fired in more than five years.  Or an ion cannon going off, or a bomb. 

The moon must be rising over the treetops, there were tiny glimpses of light coming through gaps in the evening cloud.  Jyn said “I’m glad we’ve learned to hear this place.”

“Yeah.  It’s good.  These are good sounds.” 

“On Lah’mu you could tell what the weather would be like tomorrow.  From what the rain sounded like, whether you could hear the waves inland, things like that.  And I’m starting to feel like – I can do that here, too.  Does that make sense?”

“Oh yes.  Perfect sense.”

On cue, the rain started, a few heavy drops and then suddenly a silver curtain at the edge of the veranda parapet.  Sweet as perfume, the hot earth breathed out petrichor into the darkness.  The rain wouldn’t last long, Cassian reflected; the cloud cover was pretty broken tonight, it probably wouldn’t be much more than a shower.

He was learning the feel and the sound of the weather, its smells and colours, which clouds meant storm and which meant a gentle drizzle.  He was learning what made what noise; what bit, or carried parasites that might bite, what would eat the vegetables in the garden and what would pollinate them, and what would just fly by in harmless swarming colour.  Learning and recording it all.  What ate what and what mated with what, high among the trees or out at sea, under the surface of the creek, down among the leaf litter or deep in the cenotes.  Learning, too, what Esperanz was fascinated by; and how very little disgust response a small child has, who is growing up in safety and in a world he can trust; how little hate and how much curiosity. 

Esper was learning his home, and how to be at home in it; and so was Cassian, so was Jyn.  With the family they’d dreamed of and never expected to have, and the community.  Home, and peace, and life, all theirs at last, to be learned and loved.

_Plip-plop, plip-plop.  What?  What?  What-ooo…_

He put an arm round Jyn and she leaned into his side in the dark.  They sat drinking the last of the chilled tea, listening and hearing the brief silver patter of rain.  The sounds of home, undisturbed, the voices of peace across their whole world.  Not _One day_ , not _If we win_ or even _When we win_ , anymore, but now and here, and alive.  


End file.
